I think they should hire you as a spokesperson, because I don't think that's what their intentions are at all. But this opportunity you speak of, would that be debt forgiveness? Going to need the government for that. They overpaid for an education and in the meantime someone moved their cheese? Time to figure out something else then, isn't it? No, wait, I have a better idea. I'm going to sit in a park and protest about it!
Yeah, we get it. The message could be more focused. That's part of the reason why in my local "occupy" movement I've pushed for some less lofty and better thought-out goals.
Let's use the student loan example. My fiance is struggling under almost a quarter million dollars of debt because she chose to go into a career that required a lot of school and her family didn't have the money to pay for it up front. So she took out student loans so she could get the education, and then get the job.
Unfortunately, even though she makes a considerable amount of money as a Veterinarian a very large chunk of that goes into student loan payments each month. While loan forgiveness would be great, realistically it's not a good solution. If that all just disappeared it would have far-reaching implications in numerous industries, even though it would benefit her personally.
So instead, what we're suggesting (and I've put forth to the local "occupy" group to hopefully gain some more voices) is that we consider why loans are necessary. In other countries, people gaining the same education she was getting (at the same colleges) were paying a fractional amount of what she was paying, if they paid anything at all. In return, these countries required the veterinarians to work at lower wages in their home country. And everyone pays higher taxes to help share that burden. Things like Vets and doctors are necessary in society to keep people and animals healthy, so it benefits the public to pay for their education. A specific possibility is working towards increasing the amount of publicly-available student loans and grants available. Obviously the former makes a bit more fiscal sense than the latter, in this specific situation. A huge problem with her student loans is simply the volatility in the rates and repayment schedules. Despite having perfect credit, the terms can change at will because of the types of loans she took out.
Another idea that may require less direct government intervention would be to simply provide assistance to students in picking out the correct loans to get, so that they're protected from more predatory loans.
Specifically, it would take a multifaceted approach to reform the Student Loan problem, and since both her and I are actually busy working full-time jobs, we can't really figure out all the details. Instead we'd like some of those to be ironed out by the politicians themselves. And really, we don't expect we'd see any change that would affect her loans. So it'd be nice to use what we've learned to better the system for the next group that comes along.
I would actually enjoy hearing some "bootstrap pulling up" stories in another thread at some point. Or any sort of "how I got where I am" whether it's up, down, boring, complex, or awesome.
I would actually enjoy hearing some "bootstrap pulling up" stories in another thread at some point. Or any sort of "how I got where I am" whether it's up, down, boring, complex, or awesome.
Look, you guys are getting angry at me personally and I would prefer not to have that so I'm going to do what I should have done in the beginning and stop arguing on the internet.
Whaleshark, please. I will stipulate that people need people. I will stipulate that many wonderful people have helped me in life. I will stipulate that I am very, very lucky. However, I have met a lot of people who missed out on that hard work gene. For whatever reason, they haven't been as lucky.
Believe what you want. It is still a free country.
No worries. You're allowed to believe what you'd want, too. In the end it's good to see the other side occasionally. We've gotta come out of our respective trenches every once in awhile, even if it's just to see the other person's human too.
I would actually enjoy hearing some "bootstrap pulling up" stories in another thread at some point. Or any sort of "how I got where I am" whether it's up, down, boring, complex, or awesome.
Whaleshark, I should not have used the "started with nothing phrase." I recognize it is politically charged. I agree with you in that I tapped resources, but I also created new ones. People assume that jobs are magical. Guess what, they are not. Also, people with a scarcity mentality think that life is a zero sum game. It is not. There are always possibilities.
Squadron, the marketplace is the best thing we've got to determine what's important and what's not. She made the choice to do what she did. I had student debt when I was younger too. It will get better. When you say "to provide" ask yourself who is doing the providing?
Ok, I promised I would stop and I'm going to stop. There are some fine minds here. I don't necessarily agree with them obviously, but it's been fun.
Thaed, want to come onto GeekNights and have ourselves a roundtable discussion? I miss debating with you on FNPL. (Note that I haven't weighed in here in this slightly-uncivil thread).
Fair enough. I disagree with your premise about the marketplace, but would be completely ready to pay higher taxes to fund these services being provided. I think we'd have a larger argument about that, though.
Although, I've actually thought through what you want me to think about, bouncing ideas off my better half constantly to refine my ideas (she loves to play devil's advocate and does it too well).
Regardless, enjoy turkey day. I think that's something we all can agree on.
Thaed, want to come onto GeekNights and have ourselves a roundtable discussion? I miss debating with you on FNPL. (Note that I haven't weighed in here in this slightly-uncivil thread).
Yeah... sorry about that. Obviously there's a reason why politics hasn't gotten so polarizing in the US. A lot of this stuff is close to the heart and it's hard to refrain from snapping off a retort before thinking about it.
Yes. I'll do that. :-)
Love that fact that people like the poor boy makes good stories then don't like the boy's politics when he's all grown up! LOL
It happens. Before my parents sat down and talked to me about why I changed my mind about a lot of things they taught me, they probably were trying to figure out where they went wrong. The point being that I probably wouldn't dislike your politics so much if we actually hashed it all out in some sort of cool-headed manner (which is not really easy to do on the Internet, as it turns out).
A big problem with what's been going on recently is that everyone always assumes that their opponent doesn't know as much about politics/people/the nature of wealth as they do. So few people actually discuss ideas openly anymore.
I think they should hire you as a spokesperson, because I don't think that's what their intentions are at all. But this opportunity you speak of, would that be debt forgiveness? Going to need the government for that. They overpaid for an education and in the meantime someone moved their cheese? Time to figure out something else then, isn't it? No, wait, I have a better idea. I'm going to sit in a park and protest about it!
Yeah, we get it. The message could be more focused. That's part of the reason why in my local "occupy" movement I've pushed for some less lofty and better thought-out goals.
Let's use the student loan example. My fiance is struggling under almost a quarter million dollars of debt because she chose to go into a career that required a lot of school and her family didn't have the money to pay for it up front. So she took out student loans so she could get the education, and then get the job.
Unfortunately, even though she makes a considerable amount of money as a Veterinarian a very large chunk of that goes into student loan payments each month. While loan forgiveness would be great, realistically it's not a good solution. If that all just disappeared it would have far-reaching implications in numerous industries, even though it would benefit her personally.
So instead, what we're suggesting (and I've put forth to the local "occupy" group to hopefully gain some more voices) is that we consider why loans are necessary. In other countries, people gaining the same education she was getting (at the same colleges) were paying a fractional amount of what she was paying, if they paid anything at all. In return, these countries required the veterinarians to work at lower wages in their home country. And everyone pays higher taxes to help share that burden. Things like Vets and doctors are necessary in society to keep people and animals healthy, so it benefits the public to pay for their education. A specific possibility is working towards increasing the amount of publicly-available student loans and grants available. Obviously the former makes a bit more fiscal sense than the latter, in this specific situation. A huge problem with her student loans is simply the volatility in the rates and repayment schedules. Despite having perfect credit, the terms can change at will because of the types of loans she took out.
Another idea that may require less direct government intervention would be to simply provide assistance to students in picking out the correct loans to get, so that they're protected from more predatory loans.
Specifically, it would take a multifaceted approach to reform the Student Loan problem, and since both her and I are actually busy working full-time jobs, we can't really figure out all the details. Instead we'd like some of those to be ironed out by the politicians themselves. And really, we don't expect we'd see any change that would affect her loans. So it'd be nice to use what we've learned to better the system for the next group that comes along.
This is exactly why all of my societal arguments come down to "better education." The only rich versus poor argument I will ever listen to is rich neighborhoods that have way better school systems than an Arkansas public school. That is the issue that people should be on top of, I have no sympathy for the jobless but I do for the kid who wants to be a particle physicist but attends a school that still teaches creationism.
I agree with you in that I tapped resources, but I also created new ones.
I'm all about creating new opportunities. That's a fantastic thing, and anyone who does it deserves all the reward they reap from it.
I come at it from this perspective: if you started with very little, but made excellent use of the resources around you, what would have happened had you started with more resources?
We can collectively create a set of resources that anyone can use, and some of those people may be able to excel because of that. Should we not do that? Give back to that which made us so that it in turn can make other people even greater?
How appropriate to be having a discussion about remembering and respecting those things you've had in your life, right around Thanksgiving. Happy turkey day, everyone.
I'm not a troll, but I am questioning your premises. I love the vague "banks speculated and people suffered" offered up as proof of something. Please leave the coffee shop and get some real world experience. Krugman is tying together many different concepts and coming up with the idea that more government is going to help. That's really passion over logic. Boom and bust happens all the time.
Good. Talking about premises is a good start. So we'll talk about this and make sure we are all clear and not vague.
First we have the premise of bank speculation leading to massive calamity. You obviously don't see this as valid.
The contention is that banks and speculative entities were responsible for the recession. So we have to address what caused the recession. Most people agree that the immediate cause of the recession was the bursting of the housing bubble. If you dispute that let me know. Taking that as the case we have to address what caused the housing bubble. A main component of this was the activity of creating sub prime loans, bundling them in special ways and acquiring AAA ratings to make them seem like extremely safe investments. More speculative risk led to more profit which led to more work on subprime loans. These loans were being pumped out by banks so quickly that they often stopped doing paperwork properly, as we see now with many banks trying to foreclose on homes they don't have proper paperwork for.
Furthermore you had various companies that were over leveraged on these loans, sometimes at rates of 30 to 1, meaning much more profit but extreme risk if things went south.
Then the bubble burst, the crisis hit, and many corporations were ready to go bankrupt from how over leveraged they were. Bear Stearns faded away and many other corporations would have died if not for a massive bailout. Those companies are now paying huge bonuses to the people who were busy running things into the ground as outlined above.
Individuals and groups of individuals create wealth. Wealth creation does not happen via government action. Just ask the people of Greece.
Talk about vague. And probably a red herring. the US government is not trying to centrally control the economy and is nothing like Europe. Just ask Ireland which was running government surpluses right up until the Great Recession when things went bust. We could go on for hours about wealth creation and how things like Interstate highways would never exist without government action and how they definitely create value and wealth and aide in entrepreneurs being able o bring products to market. We should make a new thread for that probably. I'll happily take a pro socialism stance for the hell of it on that one :P
I can't change your minds about this or about OWS or probably anything for that matter. But I can tell you some truth. Life is as simple as knowing what you want. If you want something, develop and use your talents and achieve it. If you wait for the government to do it, you'll be waiting your life away.
I won't spend the time trying to unpack all the implicit assumptions about the welfare state breeding laziness and will just note OWS is principally about saying "We worked hard, played by the rules and didn't get what we want."
Every now and then I think you're advocating a violent overthrow of the government because that's where motivational speaking like above might lead to with our system.
As a postscript... Paul Krugman predicted the housing bubble when most people were saying full steam ahead. Paul Krugman said the Obama administrations stimulus package was too small to fully deal with the economy. Krugman argued because we are in a liquidity trap even with quantitative easing we would not see very much inflation. Krugman said US Treasury rates would drop despite conventional wisdom.
I think they should hire you as a spokesperson, because I don't think that's what their intentions are at all. But this opportunity you speak of, would that be debt forgiveness? Going to need the government for that. They overpaid for an education and in the meantime someone moved their cheese? Time to figure out something else then, isn't it? No, wait, I have a better idea. I'm going to sit in a park and protest about it!
Yeah, we get it. The message could be more focused. That's part of the reason why in my local "occupy" movement I've pushed for some less lofty and better thought-out goals.
Let's use the student loan example. My fiance is struggling under almost a quarter million dollars of debt because she chose to go into a career that required a lot of school and her family didn't have the money to pay for it up front. So she took out student loans so she could get the education, and then get the job.
Unfortunately, even though she makes a considerable amount of money as a Veterinarian a very large chunk of that goes into student loan payments each month. While loan forgiveness would be great, realistically it's not a good solution. If that all just disappeared it would have far-reaching implications in numerous industries, even though it would benefit her personally.
So instead, what we're suggesting (and I've put forth to the local "occupy" group to hopefully gain some more voices) is that we consider why loans are necessary. In other countries, people gaining the same education she was getting (at the same colleges) were paying a fractional amount of what she was paying, if they paid anything at all. In return, these countries required the veterinarians to work at lower wages in their home country. And everyone pays higher taxes to help share that burden. Things like Vets and doctors are necessary in society to keep people and animals healthy, so it benefits the public to pay for their education. A specific possibility is working towards increasing the amount of publicly-available student loans and grants available. Obviously the former makes a bit more fiscal sense than the latter, in this specific situation. A huge problem with her student loans is simply the volatility in the rates and repayment schedules. Despite having perfect credit, the terms can change at will because of the types of loans she took out.
Another idea that may require less direct government intervention would be to simply provide assistance to students in picking out the correct loans to get, so that they're protected from more predatory loans.
Specifically, it would take a multifaceted approach to reform the Student Loan problem, and since both her and I are actually busy working full-time jobs, we can't really figure out all the details. Instead we'd like some of those to be ironed out by the politicians themselves. And really, we don't expect we'd see any change that would affect her loans. So it'd be nice to use what we've learned to better the system for the next group that comes along.
This is exactly why all of my societal arguments come down to "better education." The only rich versus poor argument I will ever listen to is rich neighborhoods that have way better school systems than an Arkansas public school. That is the issue that people should be on top of, I have no sympathy for the jobless but I do for the kid who wants to be a particle physicist but attends a school that still teaches creationism.
Hey! Me too! Almost every single argument I have about societal problems comes down to education. *high-five*
Seriously, though, I don't have the time to fully understand every possible problem and possible solution out there so I've put my effort into learning about the one that affects someone I care about. From what I've seen, better/more accessible education will only result in a net benefit.
Quarter million in student loans to be a vet???
35k/year over 7 years?
Sounds right.
Yep. More, actually, because of some things specific to Vet school. For example, there are far, far fewer Vet schools than Med or Law schools in the US (actually... some vets argue for maintaining the low amount of schools to artificially increase their client base). Therefore, they accept very few new students every year. So your choice is either to work as a Vet Tech while you continually try to get into a US school, or get into Vet School in a country that allows you to work as a Vet in the US.
Even though she got into college early due to academics (and got basically a 4.0 GPA while in college), she only qualified for partial scholarships for her undergrad, and thus left college with a fair amount of debt already. Working as a vet tech doesn't pay a whole hell of a lot when you're working in a geographic area around a vet school (they take advantage of people wanting to work and get experience while waiting to be admitted into a vet school), so she would have been working for a few years at a salary that would barely cover some of the repayment of student loans (and she didn't want them to be pushed off for too terribly long due to the repayment schedules).
So since she didn't make it into any vet schools into the US, which would have been cheaper, she went to Vet school in Ireland. So in addition to the tuition there (she got a little assistance, but not a ton) she had to pay for housing and whatnot in Ireland.
She still led a very, very low-spending lifestyle but it managed to land her with a quarter of a million dollars of debt. Note that this is actually around 5-6 years after she started working as a Vet. When she started it was probably closer to $300k or $350k.
Hence why both of us are so passionate about the next generation. Considering that almost every other student she was in Vet school with left with little to no debt, and her US citizenship didn't really offer any tangible benefits (she makes a higher salary than her peers in other countries, but it's more than offset by the loan payments, also note that she had the benefit of going to a Catholic - read, super cheap - private school that she was able to attend due to her dad's connections and didn't go to Public schools), we're hard-pressed to explain why all the other systems are wrong, even considering the current credit crisis overseas.
It's crazy that so many things aligned to help her get her current job, actually. I don't see how anyone born without any sort of real advantages (either monetary or some sort of connections) could really make it. Everything aligned perfectly for her and she still ended up in really high debt.
We'll schedule a time. I might bring one more person in to make it four. To use a phrase that has become increasingly relevant to my life since joining the executive world... "We'll take this offline." In other words, I'll email you. ^_~
Rym, have you started "Ping"-ing people yet? Whenever someone says they'll ping me about something I remind them that there's a chance I'll just time-out.
Rym, have you started "Ping"-ing people yet? Whenever someone says they'll ping me about something I remind them that there's a chance I'll just time-out.
We're a little more nerdy than that. I'll 35=H someone, and they might 35=8 me. A common goodbye as someone walks out is 39=3.
@ThaedTo use a phrase that has become increasingly relevant to my life since joining the executive world... "We'll take this offline." In other words, I'll email you. ^_~
Makes it sound like you're going to have a fistfight, not send messages back and forth.
Rym, have you started "Ping"-ing people yet? Whenever someone says they'll ping me about something I remind them that there's a chance I'll just time-out.
We're a little more nerdy than that. I'll 35=H someone, and they might 35=8 me. A common goodbye as someone walks out is 39=3.
"Regardless, enjoy turkey day. I think that's something we all can agree on."
Now I really want to make comments about people in the colonies "started with nothing" and made a new country for themselves. And about creating new resources. And about how it wasn't a zero sum game.
"Regardless, enjoy turkey day. I think that's something we all can agree on."
Now I really want to make comments about people in the colonies "started with nothing" and made a new country for themselves. And about creating new resources. And about how it wasn't a zero sum game.
Yea, 1% of transplanted Europeans cheated/killed/pushed out 99% of the Indians.
"Regardless, enjoy turkey day. I think that's something we all can agree on."
Now I really want to make comments about people in the colonies "started with nothing" and made a new country for themselves. And about creating new resources. And about how it wasn't a zero sum game.
Yea, 1% of transplanted Europeans cheated/killed/pushed out 99% of the Indians.
Native Americans you mean. The Indians pushed out the Europeans.
American Indians is the preferred term, according to the Associated Press.
OK.
Fun fact: I've met numerous people in the UK who think that "Red Indian" is not only acceptable parlance, but are shocked that we don't say it in the US. Same thing with when you explain that "Eskimo" is sometimes pejorative and that there are, in fact, many different tribes of Inuit, Inupiat, Yupik, and Aleut peoples, and that other tribes of Amerindians exist in the north (Tlingit, etc).
Comments
Let's use the student loan example. My fiance is struggling under almost a quarter million dollars of debt because she chose to go into a career that required a lot of school and her family didn't have the money to pay for it up front. So she took out student loans so she could get the education, and then get the job.
Unfortunately, even though she makes a considerable amount of money as a Veterinarian a very large chunk of that goes into student loan payments each month. While loan forgiveness would be great, realistically it's not a good solution. If that all just disappeared it would have far-reaching implications in numerous industries, even though it would benefit her personally.
So instead, what we're suggesting (and I've put forth to the local "occupy" group to hopefully gain some more voices) is that we consider why loans are necessary. In other countries, people gaining the same education she was getting (at the same colleges) were paying a fractional amount of what she was paying, if they paid anything at all. In return, these countries required the veterinarians to work at lower wages in their home country. And everyone pays higher taxes to help share that burden. Things like Vets and doctors are necessary in society to keep people and animals healthy, so it benefits the public to pay for their education. A specific possibility is working towards increasing the amount of publicly-available student loans and grants available. Obviously the former makes a bit more fiscal sense than the latter, in this specific situation. A huge problem with her student loans is simply the volatility in the rates and repayment schedules. Despite having perfect credit, the terms can change at will because of the types of loans she took out.
Another idea that may require less direct government intervention would be to simply provide assistance to students in picking out the correct loans to get, so that they're protected from more predatory loans.
Specifically, it would take a multifaceted approach to reform the Student Loan problem, and since both her and I are actually busy working full-time jobs, we can't really figure out all the details. Instead we'd like some of those to be ironed out by the politicians themselves. And really, we don't expect we'd see any change that would affect her loans. So it'd be nice to use what we've learned to better the system for the next group that comes along.
Squadron, the marketplace is the best thing we've got to determine what's important and what's not. She made the choice to do what she did. I had student debt when I was younger too. It will get better. When you say "to provide" ask yourself who is doing the providing?
Ok, I promised I would stop and I'm going to stop. There are some fine minds here. I don't necessarily agree with them obviously, but it's been fun.
Although, I've actually thought through what you want me to think about, bouncing ideas off my better half constantly to refine my ideas (she loves to play devil's advocate and does it too well).
Regardless, enjoy turkey day. I think that's something we all can agree on.
Love that fact that people like the poor boy makes good stories then don't like the boy's politics when he's all grown up! LOL
A big problem with what's been going on recently is that everyone always assumes that their opponent doesn't know as much about politics/people/the nature of wealth as they do. So few people actually discuss ideas openly anymore.
Sounds right.
I come at it from this perspective: if you started with very little, but made excellent use of the resources around you, what would have happened had you started with more resources?
We can collectively create a set of resources that anyone can use, and some of those people may be able to excel because of that. Should we not do that? Give back to that which made us so that it in turn can make other people even greater?
How appropriate to be having a discussion about remembering and respecting those things you've had in your life, right around Thanksgiving. Happy turkey day, everyone.
First we have the premise of bank speculation leading to massive calamity. You obviously don't see this as valid.
The contention is that banks and speculative entities were responsible for the recession. So we have to address what caused the recession. Most people agree that the immediate cause of the recession was the bursting of the housing bubble. If you dispute that let me know. Taking that as the case we have to address what caused the housing bubble. A main component of this was the activity of creating sub prime loans, bundling them in special ways and acquiring AAA ratings to make them seem like extremely safe investments. More speculative risk led to more profit which led to more work on subprime loans. These loans were being pumped out by banks so quickly that they often stopped doing paperwork properly, as we see now with many banks trying to foreclose on homes they don't have proper paperwork for.
Furthermore you had various companies that were over leveraged on these loans, sometimes at rates of 30 to 1, meaning much more profit but extreme risk if things went south.
I'll just note Paul Krugman was talking about there being a housing bubble a year before the crisis and most commentators said he was crazy.
Then the bubble burst, the crisis hit, and many corporations were ready to go bankrupt from how over leveraged they were. Bear Stearns faded away and many other corporations would have died if not for a massive bailout. Those companies are now paying huge bonuses to the people who were busy running things into the ground as outlined above.
Talk about vague. And probably a red herring. the US government is not trying to centrally control the economy and is nothing like Europe. Just ask Ireland which was running government surpluses right up until the Great Recession when things went bust. We could go on for hours about wealth creation and how things like Interstate highways would never exist without government action and how they definitely create value and wealth and aide in entrepreneurs being able o bring products to market. We should make a new thread for that probably. I'll happily take a pro socialism stance for the hell of it on that one :P I won't spend the time trying to unpack all the implicit assumptions about the welfare state breeding laziness and will just note OWS is principally about saying "We worked hard, played by the rules and didn't get what we want."
Every now and then I think you're advocating a violent overthrow of the government because that's where motivational speaking like above might lead to with our system.
As a postscript... Paul Krugman predicted the housing bubble when most people were saying full steam ahead. Paul Krugman said the Obama administrations stimulus package was too small to fully deal with the economy. Krugman argued because we are in a liquidity trap even with quantitative easing we would not see very much inflation. Krugman said US Treasury rates would drop despite conventional wisdom.
Krugman was correct about all of that. In fact Hamilton College performed a study of pundits and ranked Krugman as one of the most accurate prognosticators there is. So I think if this keeps up I need to end every post with this picture
Seriously, though, I don't have the time to fully understand every possible problem and possible solution out there so I've put my effort into learning about the one that affects someone I care about. From what I've seen, better/more accessible education will only result in a net benefit. Yep. More, actually, because of some things specific to Vet school. For example, there are far, far fewer Vet schools than Med or Law schools in the US (actually... some vets argue for maintaining the low amount of schools to artificially increase their client base). Therefore, they accept very few new students every year. So your choice is either to work as a Vet Tech while you continually try to get into a US school, or get into Vet School in a country that allows you to work as a Vet in the US.
Even though she got into college early due to academics (and got basically a 4.0 GPA while in college), she only qualified for partial scholarships for her undergrad, and thus left college with a fair amount of debt already. Working as a vet tech doesn't pay a whole hell of a lot when you're working in a geographic area around a vet school (they take advantage of people wanting to work and get experience while waiting to be admitted into a vet school), so she would have been working for a few years at a salary that would barely cover some of the repayment of student loans (and she didn't want them to be pushed off for too terribly long due to the repayment schedules).
So since she didn't make it into any vet schools into the US, which would have been cheaper, she went to Vet school in Ireland. So in addition to the tuition there (she got a little assistance, but not a ton) she had to pay for housing and whatnot in Ireland.
She still led a very, very low-spending lifestyle but it managed to land her with a quarter of a million dollars of debt. Note that this is actually around 5-6 years after she started working as a Vet. When she started it was probably closer to $300k or $350k.
Hence why both of us are so passionate about the next generation. Considering that almost every other student she was in Vet school with left with little to no debt, and her US citizenship didn't really offer any tangible benefits (she makes a higher salary than her peers in other countries, but it's more than offset by the loan payments, also note that she had the benefit of going to a Catholic - read, super cheap - private school that she was able to attend due to her dad's connections and didn't go to Public schools), we're hard-pressed to explain why all the other systems are wrong, even considering the current credit crisis overseas.
It's crazy that so many things aligned to help her get her current job, actually. I don't see how anyone born without any sort of real advantages (either monetary or some sort of connections) could really make it. Everything aligned perfectly for her and she still ended up in really high debt.
We'll schedule a time. I might bring one more person in to make it four. To use a phrase that has become increasingly relevant to my life since joining the executive world... "We'll take this offline." In other words, I'll email you. ^_~
Now I really want to make comments about people in the colonies "started with nothing" and made a new country for themselves. And about creating new resources. And about how it wasn't a zero sum game.